Of Tripod and Palate Food, Politics, and Religion in Traditional China [Hardcover]

Attitudes toward food and commensality constituted a central fiber in the social, religious, and political fabric of ancient Chinese society. The offering of sacrifices, the banqueting of guests, and the ritual preparation, prohibition or consumption of food and drink were central elements in each of China's three main religious traditions: the Classicist (Confucian) tradition, religious Daoism, and Buddhism. What links late Shang and Zhou bronze vessels to Buddhist dietary codes or Daoist recipes for immortality is a poignant testimony that culinary activity - fasting and feasting - governed not only human relationships but also fermented the communication between humans and the spirit world. In Of Tripod and Palate leading scholars examine the relationship between secular and religious food culture in ancient China from various perspectives.Introduction: Secular and Religious Food-ways in Traditional China; R.Sterckx Sacrifice, Feasts, and the Creation of Hierarchy: A Study of Food Exchange in Early China; M.J.Puett Moonshine and Millet: Feasting and Purification Rituals in Ancient China; C.Cook Food and Philosophy in Pre-Buddhist China; R.Sterckx Food, Medicine and Religion; V.Lo Eating Better Than Gods: Cuisines of Transcendence in Late Classical and Early Medieval China; R.F.Campany The Daoist Kitchen; T.F.Kleeman Buddhist Vegetarianism in China; J.Kieschnick Buddhism, Alcohol and Tea in Medieval China; J.A.Benn

This is a highly successful book. In it, we find new insights from a remarkable range of international specialists on the significance of food in religion, political theory, social order, medicine, and human physiology, and how people in pre-modern China made their choices on what to eat and what not to eat.

- Robert Chard, Institute for Chinese Studies, University of Oxford

If television has been described as the poor man's nirvana , then the medieval Chinese description of food as the Heaven of ordinary lÓ&